Episode 007:
Experience Matters With Eric Newton: Bob Brookover on City-Planning and College Football – 007

Welcome everyone to another Experience Matters with Eric Newton. Today we have Bob Brookover, professor faculty member over in the PRTM department at Clemson University. Welcome Bob. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah. So Bob and I go way back. We’ve known each other for a very long time. He’s a lot older than me, but we’ve been friends for a long time. He’s been in the area for a really long time. So Bob, tell us how you,

how you got to Clemson? Well, I grew up in Virginia and wanted to go south for college and I wanted to go somewhere big and far enough away that my parents couldn’t like pop in in the afternoon and surprise me. So I was actually, I was looking at Georgia, Florida State and Florida at the time. And some friends of my parents that had gone to Clemson said, Hey, you ought to stop at Clemson. You got to pass it right when you go, go into the university of Georgia.

And I said, what in the heck is Clemson? Like I really had no idea. You know, it may be kind of heard of it and we stopped, fell in love with it. didn’t even apply to any of other three places at the end. And, so got accepted. It was funny. I was like talking in a, in one of my classes the other day and a lot of times in the beginning of the semester, I’ll do a little Clemson history, stuff and,

As I was talking to him the other day, I was talking about the act of acceptance with Thomas Green Clemson’s will. And I think that was accepted on Christmas Eve of 1888. And I think we had been out of town and I got my acceptance letter to Clemson on Christmas Eve of 1988.

So exactly a hundred years later and didn’t like it, didn’t put that together until the other day. But I remember it being Christmas Eve and it would have been 1988. So that was kind of cool. Um, so got dropped off here. I was still 17 for like the first month or so we were in school on August 20th of 1989 and, uh, did my undergrad. I started out as a business major. Um, finance didn’t like that a whole lot. Uh, and I took a, um, what I call my sabbatical after my sophomore year where I had to, I went home and got some gen ed credits out of the way for a semester and evaluated my future and seriousness about education and came back after one semester. And I changed my major to a PRTM at that point. So graduated with an undergrad degree in PRTM, stayed and got my master’s. I was a grad assistant at FIKE in campus recreation. I think that’s when we met when you were… probably, probably. And, got done with that. It became a full-time job about the time I was getting done with my masters a little bit after that, but it decided I wanted to stick around and do a PhD. And, at that point I thought I wanted to be kind of like a Dean of students type person. So my PhD is actually in higher ed administration.

And so… did that full time for about six years or so over at Campus Recreation and slowly worked on my PhD, finished that up in 2002. But in 2001, got the opportunity to move over to PRTM as a faculty member. I’d been teaching like a class or so a semester for them while I was in Campus Recreation. So moved over there in 2001 and have, you know, it’s been a really interesting career. Being a faculty member is a great… you know, kind of deal, you, you get to get involved in a lot of, a lot of different things. I’ve been able to kind of reinvent myself, like chasing, you know, different things from a research and consulting perspective over the years. And then, you know, you’re getting to, getting to teach and hang around with young people that somewhat keeps you young and engaged. And, what I like about Clemson and being a land grant is that, mission of going out and helping communities… And those types of things. So over the years got to stay engaged with the field of parks, recreation, tourism, sport management, and worked with a lot of different cities and counties and nonprofits and organizations over the years. So have been on faculty now 20 something years, 24 years. That’s crazy. Yep. So it is, it’s like gone by in the blink of an eye and seems like a thousand years ago too, at the same time, you know, it’s one of those…  one of those crazy things. And now you’re getting close to retiring, right? Plan is I’m going to retire this year. I’m really thinking about, you know, last class last semester that I’m teaching right now, but I have a few things that I could probably finish up over the summer from a research perspective. And I’m kind of evaluating that right now. But if I do stick around over the summer and you know, again, finish up some things… I think I’m going to go ahead and make my, my, my retirement date, August 20th, because I don’t know. I remember that also, but, my, day I got dropped off as a 17 year old was August 20th of 1989. So just like book ended with August 20th, 1989. would be cool. August 20th of 2025. And then I can say, Hey, 36 years of college down the drain.

Well, so what do you plan to do with yourself after you? I was going to say graduate. What are you planning to do? What do you plan to do after you retire? They finally made me choose a major. I can graduate now finally after all these years. Still, what are you going to do when you grow up? Yeah, still no clue whatsoever whatsoever. Still still evaluating what I’m going to do. I, you know, default is to, you know, I could crank up outside consulting again, working with city and county governments, all over the country, doing strategic planning and economic impact analysis and those types of studies, economic development. so might do that and looking around open, anybody out there that has a job that they want a person that spent 36 years in college, anything interesting, I’m open to anything. I’ll only be, I’ll still be 53 at that point.

We’ve got a sophomore in high school, so I’ll have to do something semi-legitimate until she gets through college. So, tell us a little bit about like some of the consulting gigs that you’ve done and been a part of, would have been some of the best ones, the worst ones. mean, you mentioned like, doing economic impact studies and things like that. I know for a fact that you got to go to the Heritage every year for a very long period of time. That one’s very interesting to me and I know you have fun with that, but give me an idea of some of the things that you’ve done over the past however many years. Yeah, so you mentioned the RBC Heritage. I semi, only semi-joke that the RBC Heritage is one of the most long-term relationships I’ve had in my life. And so… starting in I think 1999 was the first time Thompson was involved in that study and a couple other faculty members, the Backmans and Bill Norman were doing that. And, you know, they got me a little bit involved and we actually said the RBC heritage, if you don’t know what that is, it’s, you know, PGA tour event that’s down on Hilton head. It’s been I think when we started out, it was maybe the MCI heritage was the sponsor at that point, then it became Verizon.

I think Verizon took over and then RBC now. But what we do is we do an economic impact analysis and a kind of market analysis study forum every five years is when we actually go and we collect the data. just did it again this year in 2024. So that’s been a great relationship. And again, I mean, that thing has had a massive impact on, you know, it’s an important thing for Hilton Head it kinda… it’s in a shoulder season, you know, it’s usually late March, April, that that tournament happens. And it’s, you know, things are a little more year round now, But you know, that that kind of big event with that many people coming into town and spending money, you know, businesses come through the winter when things are slower, and then you get this big, you know, hit then and then spring breaks and things like that when kids are there. But then, you know, until you get to May and the bulk of Taurus season, you know, that’s an important event that kind of kicks off the Taurus season forum. It’s also, you know, it’s right after the masters, right? Yeah. And it’s the week after the masters. know, it’s kind of cool. It’s one of those things, you know, like they say about, what’s the horse race down in, Aiken, no, the one in Camden that everybody, yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. But whatever it is, it’s like, you know, who invited all these golfers to our party. So, you know, it’s a nice laid back the golfers after coming down off.

you know, the stress of the week of the masters, you know, are pretty laid back. And, um, so it’s really, really fun, fun event to, uh, to go to. is a lot of fun. It’s like a giant cocktail party on the golf course. It is. It’s, it’s, it’s absolutely great. And, um, so, you know, that’s been, uh, that’s been a great study. think we did, you know, 1999, then I think we did 2005, 2010. for

they did occasionally as sponsorships were changing, they moved it up. I think we did 2014, 19 and 24. And it’s grown even with, it flattened out a little bit when you adjusted for inflation, and it was interesting this time, last study in 2019 and then you had COVID where obviously they had a little bit of restriction on what they were doing for a couple of years.

and came back and it came back strong this year. You know, it hadn’t been bad. It had just leveled out a little bit, but it came back pretty strong and even adjusting for inflation. had a ton of growth in the amount of impact. I think it was 134 million off the top of my head. Total input or output when you think about, you know, the direct spending when you’re down there and you, you know, spend money on your Airbnb or your hotel and, you know,

eating and drinking and playing golf and everything else you do when you’re down there for the trip. Plus then you have those indirect and induced effects as well where indirect effects are the businesses have a bit of an influx, a new income that week and they’re spending that money in the economy. And then the induced effects are the employees. So I always…

say that, you know, saving money is really, really bad for the economy. You know, you’ve got to spend money is good for the economy. So the induced effects are the employees when the waiter or waitress, you know, gets a couple hundred extra dollars in tips, you know, in a night and, know, over the course of the week, you don’t want them to be responsible with that money. You want them to go out and spend that on things that they wrote because they’ve got that windfall. So those are the induced effects and you get those spend through.

effects as well from the direct expenditures. Yeah, I never thought about that. Yeah. those kinds of expenditures and you know, it, the money cycles through the economy for, you know, a couple of years from that, from that one event. So, it’s been again, that’s been a really, really great group of people to work with as well. The, the, group Steve Wilmot and, Angela and everybody down there that runs that tournament. It’s a year round job. You know, it’s the, it,

If you don’t know, PGA Tour is also just a giant charity. Almost every single PGA Tour event is run by a local nonprofit who takes the proceeds from that event that, you know, the money that’s left over that they’ve made from ticket sales and sponsorships and everything else after they pay the purse and their expenses. they take that money that they’ve made and they donate that to local charities. And they have another event or two throughout the year, but that…

Heritage Classic Foundation, their board of directors does a really, really good job and has a really big impact on the low country. So that’s a big one and that’s an exciting one. Give us an example of some of the ones like dealing with some of the smaller municipalities that are trying to get infusions of capital to their recreation departments and things like that. Give us some examples of those kinds of things. Yeah. So, you know, have worked with

you know, big towns, big cities to small towns. really kind of, I liked the small town, you know, jobs that we get and the consulting and the research that we do, because, you know, I grew up mostly in almost exclusively in smaller towns and smaller communities. know, Winchester where I grew up was 25,000 people. do you call Winchester to build? Winchester to build. Yeah. What was that movie? That was,

one of those Adam Sandler movies, right? Winchester, Tinfieldville, Iowa, but Winchester, Virginia, you know, small town, you know, grew up in mostly in the Shenandoah Valley lived in, you know, little towns there. My dad was a Methodist minister, so we moved around a good bit, but I really liked that small town rural development kind of thing right now, you know, working with, working with on a team that we are doing some work in like Bishopville and Walterboro where we’re helping them, you know, think through kind of comprehensively of a number of initiatives that they could take to help, know, towns that are, they’re doing okay, but you know, they’re a little bit stagnant right now, you know, which is strange to think South Carolina has been the fastest growing fastest growth rate in the state in the country for the last two years.

And up here in the IAEA 5 corridor, we’re exactly dead center in one of the fastest growing regions in the entire world right now. But there’s still places in South Carolina that are remaining flat or even declining. for example, in Bishopville, the Department of Commerce is funding a few of these towns to help them kind of do some catalyst projects. so we look at, you think about a lot of downtowns that have done things to help create events and event spaces that get people to downtown. Then you get businesses there kind of like if you watch the, what is Knox white called now, it’s probably the 30 or 40 year overnight success story. you know, that that’s how they really started with downtown again was, was events and event spaces downtown and getting people to show up. we’re, doing a little bit of that work right now with, places like Walter burrow and Bishopville and, those are really rewarding to watch. This is gonna seem weird to say now, but Spartanburg County, for example, is another kind of long-term relationship that have done a whole lot of work over there in the last 20 years or so. And when we started 2005-06, working over in Spartanburg County, Spartanburg and County, just kind of the, they felt like the… you know, stepchild of Greenville and, know, things weren’t where they are today, you know, with the announcements recently with baseball and that kind of stuff, they were just kind of struggling to kind of find their identity and find their way again. And man, that place has really taken you go look back at what Spartanburg and Spartanburg County was in 2005 and 2008 again, it had gone through some, some decline and man, they have done all the…  all the right things along the way. I mean, that place is just, I mean, hitting on all cylinders and no offense to anybody in Greenville that I know, but man, they’re kicking Greenville’s butt right now. And I mean, Greenville grew and it’s still growing and doing well. I mean, Spartanburg has done a really, really great job in knowing where they came from and watching what’s happened over the last, you know, about 20 years there.

I mean, that one’s been really, really neat and fun to watch and remain involved. And you did a lot of work. we started with a back in like the mid, you know, 2005, six, seven, the did a big statewide tourism action plan. And then they wanted counties to do county level tourism action plans. And that lined them up to, be eligible for grant dollars and those types of things. And we started with a tourism action plan over there. And when we did that, having gotten really interested and figured out economic impact analysis, we built them some kind of data tools like a ground up economic impact analysis thing that they could use to kind of track their success. We… you know, developed a whole lot of, you know, recommendations. did a branding strategy forum. we, you know, lot of communities go through this, but you know, you live there and you’re sitting there and you don’t know what you have around you and all the great stuff that you have. So big part of that initial process was to say, all right, well, if you bring someone to town, if you have guests in town, what are you going to do? And you almost have to do like, you know, in the, in the tourism world, they call them fam tours. are you?

You know, you’ll bring people into a destination, you know, go around and show them all the stuff. And it’s like, we need to do local fam tours with you all because you all, you’ll have all this great stuff that is just kind of sitting here, but it’s not organized well. So a lot of it was like kind of organizing packaging, you know, creating kind of products that you could then go out and market. They had also, you know, they had just done tiger river park, which was extremely helpful. The big diamond field baseball softball complex.

So they were having some success there with sport tourism, but I mean, the music, arts, culture, all of those things over there, some outdoor things. I mean, they just had so many assets, they just needed to like kind of get that nudge to get going. again, their downtown’s come alive. They just announced baseball. They had multiple hotels built downtown and convention center. And I think there’s more movement there. They’ve done their.

They did their pennies for Roads years ago and just re-up that and their schools, they’ve done so many great things over there and have been lucky they kept me involved. they’re probably responsible for me kind of getting into some areas outside of parks, recreation and tourism management, the economic impact analysis. Like, hey, can you and your guy over at Clemson, Rob Carey, who

worked with for years. Can you all find the data and run some analysis on this other type of project, some economic development, bringing in a business? So we’ve done the trail things over there. Solutagrade Trail, which obviously is related to recreation, but just recently we did an economic impact study for them for the Solutagrade Trail. Again, it’s been a fun.

fun, fun place to work. And I can’t begin to tell you like the folks over in Spartanburg and RBC, just really, really appreciate those long-term relationships that you have. And what do you tell a small, really small town that’s trying to revitalize their town and they may not have those resources that like a Spartanburg would have? Well, you know, it’s,

I always say and we did, he’s our department chair now, years ago we went around and we did a study of towns and cities and parks and rec that have been really, really successful. And it’s really about getting your first win and then success build success and convincing the decision makers in town that, this is worth investing in because for a long time now, we’ve been in this mode of, taxes are bad, no one likes paying taxes.

But what we found is that, if you show people what they’re getting for their money, oftentimes most people are gonna support that and people are really, really supportive of those things that we do in the parks, rec and tourism world, community assets that make it a great place to live and play and work. so with small towns, a lot of times it’s really hard because they’ve got a small tax base. So helping them.

get their first grant, helping them find some sponsorship and alternative methods of funding, and then helping convince them and helping kind of walk through their decision makers on the return on investment with whatever they’re thinking about investing in. So those economic impact pieces and return on investment studies that we do really help because…

You can imagine as a council person, they’re nervous, like, hey, we’re going to raise two mills of taxes. People are going to go crazy, and they’re going to vote me out of office. it rarely and almost never happens. it’s getting that first win. It’s like eating the elephant. Where do you start? What’s the first thing that we can do to get that first success that then we’ll say, all right, we want more. We want more. want more every time. Tell me how you put together a

a project like what that one in Spartberg is called Upward or that big sports complex over there. Yeah. So tell me how like how a municipality puts together a big project like that was that was a private nonprofit. Was it okay that okay. But like for Tiger River Park, for example, they use the hospitality tax in Spartanburg. So they pass the hospitality tax, which is that 2 %

that you pay on prepared food and beverage. So you go out to a restaurant, you go buy a sub at Publix, those types of things, you get that extra 2%. That stays local. When that’s collected, that comes back directly to the city, actually, like right next to Nick’s. when Dale, at the end of each month, Dale has to look at his sales and take his 2 % on his sales for…

food, beverage, that kind of thing over the city and pay it. So that generates a good bit of money. And as you can imagine in a county wide system, that 2%. So they use that and a lot of people have used that over the years, hospitality and accommodations tax, the local portion of the tax on hotels, hospitality tax generates more money typically than the accommodations tax. But that’s been a big source of income that a lot of cities

counties have used to do those kinds of things. If a city passes it first, they keep the 2%. If the county passes it first and the city hasn’t passed it, have to split it. They, they, they have to split. Actually the city, you, the county, think maybe can only collect one percent. I can’t remember what the exact rule is, but anyway, you have to split it. So if the county beats a city to passing that, then the city only gets to keep 1%. But if the city beats the county,

then the city keeps the 2 % in the city limits and the county gets it outside of that or it gets 1 % in the towns that they beat to the punch. That’s been a frustrating thing in a couple of places and I won’t name any names, but cities will say, well, we don’t wanna pass that. It’s like they have it in the county, you’re just leaving, you’re just giving them the money, right? You’re just giving it to them. You’re gonna get half of it.

And sometimes they just won’t, you know, they just don’t want to pass it. Period. Just out of principle, just out of principle. And it’s the craziest thing. No one notices. I mean, how many times do you look at your Chick-fil-A bill and say, what the heck? What’s this extra? My wife notices stuff like that. She analyzes our bills all the time. She’s like, what is this? Actually, Finn and I went to, we had breakfast at sunny side today and sometimes it’s not like

you know, exactly spelled out with the three different, you know, you’ve got your 6 % sales tax in Pickens County. We have a 1 % local option sales tax. That’s why we get like a little rebate on our property taxes each year. If you look at that. And then in Clemson, you’ve got your 2 % tax and they had all three of them. was 1 % local option, 6 % sales, 2 % hospitality. And again, it’s, you know, you think about it. It’s 20 cents on a $10 bill. It’s two bucks on a hundred dollar bill.

most people, don’t, you don’t notice it, but it generates a lot of money. You know, that, that fund in the, in the city of Clemson, that 2 % generates almost $2 million a year, like high, high one point something, you know, know, been able to do a lot of stuff with that, that money, in town without it, would, you know, it’s, it’s not free. Free money is the wrong way to put it, but, without it, there’d be, you’d notice,

Things would go away. So give me some examples of like what that that $2 million is used for in the city of Clemson. So, and by the way, for anybody that know, I’m sure most people know Bob was a former city councilman. Um, just finished. still a former city councilman. It’s actually my favorite new title X city council. So he served for four years and did a great job. And, anyway, so give us an example of what that $2 million.

was used for in the city. So it’s been used for a ton of stuff over time. can tell you, know, while, while there were one of the reasons that I ran for council, our budget in the city was like very, very messy and convoluted. And Leslie, who is new since I’ve been on council as our budget director, she would tell you she’d been a budget director for a city in Georgia forever. She’s like, I’ve never seen anything like this. And so one of the things we worked hard to do is kind of untangle all those funds because they were kind of all, you know,

just overlapping and intertwined and some things didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So we worked on that. for example, the projects that are going now, the renovations to Clemson Park behind the Methodist Church where they’re going to redo the shelter and they’re going to add a splash pad and the skate park and those kinds of things, that’s being funded by hospitality tax.

the city’s portion of the, isn’t much because the university gave most of the money for the pickleball courts. I think the pickleball courts were maybe 350,000, the pickleball courts of the, of that project going on at Nettles right now. And the university gave 250 of that, but they’re, funding that the expanded parking over at Nettles park right now, the new dog park, they’re adding another dog park at Nettles because the current one, know, little problematic in the floodplain. So, those kinds of things, you know, all over the place, it’s funded, you know, Green Crescent Trail initiatives over the years. so right now we were able to untangle that we were able to kind of increase base funding levels from different places. So that money that was intertwined and maybe was being overspent for the spirit of the law, you know, for example, you can, can

use some of that money for, fire and police. Well, we were, you know, in the past we were paying for like the entire fire truck, you know, out of hospitality tax. You’re only really supposed to be paying for like the portion that you can say, Hey, we, know, 20 % of our calls are from tourism. So maybe we pay 20%, you know, it’s not, it’s not illegal or anything. It’s just, you know, it’s convenient, easy to do. So, able to undo that. we’re actually able to

open up some headroom in there. So future initiatives, because, you know, like I said, decision makers, elected officials have been, you know, for the last 20 years or more, have been really nervous about, you know, kind of doing things and pushing the envelope and not even pushing the envelope, really. But, you know, Clemson has built up this backlog of needs and it’s not just parks and rec. mean, you know, the city probably has somewhere between

I’d say on the low end, 75 million, it’s probably close to 125. That’s the, that’s the, that’s the budget of, of road, water, sewer, and other infrastructure needs that need to be taken care of over the next 10 to 15 years, because you know, we’ve had like a $200,000 paving budget forever. Um, and, uh, so, you know, we, we’ve got this

big backlog of deferred maintenance or things that have gone too long, you know, like, this road should have been paved 10 years ago. These we’re good on, you know, water pipes and sewer pipe, but you know, people right now, I’m sure seeing some of that work going on. but you gotta put that on a cycle because if you don’t do it incrementally, then you end up with this giant bill, you know, in front of you and, and nothing’s, nothing’s less expensive right now than it’s, than than It’s only getting more more expensive. you know, we, we have that, so it’s important. I think that’s the next thing. And I’m hopeful council kind of keeps up some momentum to come up with and, staff’s doing a really good job. And they probably like, they always hated seeing me come, you know, Nathan and Benji and others when I’d say, Hey, what’s going on? You know, what’s the plan? How are we going to get this into a cycle so we can catch up?

my mantra was we’ve got to catch up to keep up and it’s not let’s just do it and catch up and stop. Let’s do it and get it on a cycle where we can do it incrementally and even bank a little bit of money. So when we have an emergency and that kind of thing, we don’t end up with this big giant elephant of a bill, right? You know, in front of us that is hard to do. And that’s a perfect segue into what I was going to ask you next is you’ve got municipalities that are stagnant.

And they, need growth. And so they’re trying to do things to, to create, um, uh, economic impact, part of what you’ve been doing. And, and then you’ve got municipalities like Clemson that like, it’s just growing like crazy, but people want it to stop growing. And I’ve always used the, the, the mantra, like, if you’re not growing, you’re dying, but you, you, have to have some growth in order to fund all that future, you know, those future expenses and.

I don’t think a lot of people really understand that there’s like, want Clemson to stay or we want our town to stay just like it is, you know, we don’t want to see any, but that doesn’t work. That’s a good way to go bankrupt. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s a fine sediment. Like, you know, it’s like, Hey, you know, I like it the way it is. And that’s, that’s fine for people to think that, but it’s just not realistic. And again, without the growth, helping fund and again, incrementally helping you get more resources to do what you need to do.

you’re gonna be in you’re gonna be in trouble. we were now that I’m off council, I’ll, you know, let the cat out of the bag. But you know, we were kind of I don’t want to say it’s not sneaky, because I mean, we did it out in public. But what most people, you know, a lot of people in Pickens County and the other municipalities don’t don’t realize is that because of that 1 % local option sales tax, that if you look at your property tax bill, you get that discount, it says… It says like local option sales tax rebate on your property bill. Yeah. And when you’re booming and doing well, you know, sales have gone up in the city of Clemson. So that 1 % on every dollar spent in the city of Clemson, that comes back and reduces our, our property tax bills. We were able to, in the four years I was on council and the first year it was hard to get people to come along, but they did. We, think we raised our tax millage.

1.7 mills. Which is, you know, that might’ve it’s, it’s nothing, you know, I mean, um, you know, the way that the way that taxes work on a $250,000 house, that’s like 30 bucks a year. Um, and you know, most people in their mortgage, goes into their escrow account and it doesn’t even change your escrow account, um, kind of thing. But because of that, because sales were going up and things are going well with that 1 % and the next year, I think we did.

six mills and we did another five or six mills and we did another few mills last year. My tax bill and this would be consistent across you know everybody, my tax bill over those four years only went up like 30 or 40 dollars and we raised taxes I think over 16 total mills in four years which is right now about almost two million dollars in new revenue and your tax bill hardly moved because of that local option sales tax deal.

Now there’s cities when you have that local option sales tax that gives you that rebate cities could be and counties even could be doing that with almost zero to no impact. And again, doing those tax increases that was a little bit lucky that we were able to do that and get a kind of bump, but tax rate and Clemson, I think they’d raised it one mill a few years before that, but it hadn’t been raised in a zillion years.

Now, you know, the five year point comes up and everything, you know, you get reassessed, people’s taxes will, you know, go up. But the state of South Carolina makes you roll that back almost, almost a neutral. When you have a reassessment year, you can’t use that as like a giant windfall. So, you know, but the you know, the good and bad news is we’re doing well in Clemson property values are going to go up. So you’re going to get a little bit of natural increase at some point.

Um, but that means you’re doing well as a town. So I know that was a long way to get around to whatever it was that you asked me that I can’t even remember now, but, know, again, that’s, you know, that’s an important thing to think about. It’s like doing things incrementally for a city is really, really important because if you just like, I’ve worked with a, with a ton of towns that are like, Oh, we’re so proud. haven’t raised our tax rate in 35 years. It’s like,

one of these days that’s going to just absolutely bite you. know, even Greenville is, know, much growth as they’ve gotten. They’ve probably, you know, they, they do, they, they’re, they’re doing well, but you scratch below the surface a little bit in Greenville. There’s some, there’s some potential issues there if they don’t change a few things structurally, I think, coming like I would be nervous if I was on there.

council with kind of the financial underpinnings because they are absolutely, you know, relying on that growth. And if that growth doesn’t occur, they’re going to be hurting. So a little bit of incremental, you know, thinking about some other sources of revenue are good. You know, they’re, they’re, again, they’re doing great. But there’s some things below the surface that I’d be like, there’s some fundamental things here that if, you know, you get a, get a, you know,

hit a hard bump in the road, could potentially, you know, you’d have to slow down maybe more than you wanted. Right. you know, kind of going forward. that’s all really interesting stuff. You’re a lot smarter than I thought you were Bob. No, but, no, it’s all real. I just made all of that So no, it’s, you know, a of, a of people don’t understand all that and, know, myself included, I may not understand all the little.

ins and outs of how governments work and everything. But I do understand, you know, economic impact and how certain things can boost local economies. One thing that we’re really, really, really fortunate to have here in Clemson, in fact, Clemson would not exist if it weren’t for Clemson University. You know, to determine the economic impact of the university would probably be really, really hard because the two, the university in the city sort of, they’re, they’re, they’re almost considered one, you know, they’re, they’re so close together. they adjoin each other. but then also the athletics. And so I kind of wanted to touch on a little bit about, know, we have a lot of athletes, student athletes that come onto the, on to our podcast. And we’ve had discussions about NIL and, and, transfer portal and all that stuff, but it’s real interesting to see how.

the landscape of college athletics has changed over the last several years. I mean, with the NIL and everything. I think, and you know more about this than me, but the NIL, I think everybody would agree, was something that needed to happen, but it kind of morphed into something way different than what it was originally intended to be. And so now universities are stuck with having to, you with the collectives.

you know, now, in addition to like the IP tays of the world where you’re raising money for scholarships, now you’re having to raise money for NIL collectives and, you’ve got the, businesses that are trying to, or that want to support some of these athletes and, through their sponsorships and things like that. and so it’s, it’s really, really changed the landscape of things. And it’s kind of, I think it’s changed. It’s, the way obviously Clemson has had to.

to operate its athletic department. And I saw just the other day where they just hired, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but to run the investment. I can’t, it’s the investment strategies for, cause you’re seeing a lot of schools that are partnering with private equity groups and things like that. so, cause they’re kind of being forced to do that, you know, to run more like a business. And now it’s going to open up the door for

You know, we used to have concerts and things at little John and stadium and we’ve never had alcohol sales. It looks like that’s, that’s going to be a thing here soon. And so they’re going to have to look for other additional sources of revenue at that level, which could in turn have a tremendous economic impact on the city of Clemson and all the local municipalities. I mean, think you get, uh, you know, you get, we have, mean,

When you’re in school, they had the rolling stones, right? Yeah. Yeah. Rollin’s first one. was my freshman year. Yeah. Pink Floyd, you know, big name George Strait. Yeah. Big names like getting those people. You too. Yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. It’s crazy to think about, that’s all Ozzy Osbourne and little John. Did you really? but that was interesting.

I hear he’s a lot more coherent now than he was back then. He is. is. Which is hard to believe. He was in really bad shape. I got to kind of help work that one and man, it was disappointing. He got out, he was just all, he was just all, you know, bent over, didn’t know where he was. He’d lose his place on the teleprompter because he couldn’t remember his lyrics. And just start saying…

God bless you. God bless you all. You know, when he’d lose his spot and then he picked back up, was, was really just, he’s like I said, he’s in better shape now than he was back then. But I mean, those, those kinds of things could have a tremendous impact. You know, we talk about all the time here, here in Clemson, and in central and Pendleton and Seneca, how, you know, a lot of these towns, they, they, they’re looking for, they’re looking for other.

We’ve got it built in, kinda, and now that exactly what, you know, kind of the path you’re going down here, the university is gonna get back into that because they’re going to have to. And, you know, I know they’re looking at concerts and other events again in Little John in the stadium. And, you know, we’re already seeing it. know, Savannah Banana’s coming. Is that April?

Savannah bananas coming. That’ll be like having a, you know, we’ve got the home football game. It’ll be like having a home football game in the spring. And you know, that is huge for businesses, know, just walk out the door here and, know, go over and grab Cameron at Tiger town and ask them, you know, what that means for you, you know, the, seven home football games. What’s he say? says something like, that’s where we make the biscuit, all the rest of his gravy or something like he has some, some goofy Cameron ism that he, that he says about football games. know, again, having other events like that throughout the year, is, you know, just great for business. And that has an effect again on the sales and all those other things that, that generate generate revenue for the city and IL with, you my hope is even though the NIL stuff drives me crazy the way that

it’s happening right now with the schools. mean, basically you’re getting NIL money for nothing. You know, it should be, I think the revenue share is great, know, pay them the salary and then have, you know, if the schools are involved in NIL, it’s like, hey, you know, the Bob Brookover Jersey sold more than whatever our baseline set is. So we had that extra, you know, bump in revenue. We’re going to share that with you too. And you could have those kinds of bonus levels and then everything else should be disconnected. And if

You know, Eric Newton enterprises wants to hire. said you had Colin on, you know, a week ago one wants to hire Colin. You’ve got to do that, but then that’s got to be disclosed and it’s got to be at like a real market rate. You know, I can’t go hire. I shouldn’t be able to go. Tell Kade club, Dick, you know, Hey, I want you to come to my kid’s birthday party for 15 minutes and pay him $500,000. That’s not a market rate for right. Kate’s not quite there yet. I don’t know who I would pay $500,000 to.

kids birthday party on or maybe Taylor Swift might be in that realm, but it has to be at market rate and disclosed from a university, Clemson kind of thing. Like I was saying earlier, not spending your money and saving your money is bad. I’m hopeful that all the athletes now that are going to get a windfall, spend it in the city of Clemson. That’s going to help us, man. You’ve got a ton of money. Go out and spend it here. Spend it locally.

that, that can be, that can be good, but I’m, I’m excited. You know, I know that they are in the background, you know, working on those things, alcohol sales in the stadium. think that’s going to happen sooner rather than later in, in little John, you know, before basketball season’s over potentially. And, I would, I would be absolutely shocked if it’s not, happening in the fall in the football stadium or even baseball in the spring. It’s going to be, it’s going to be great.

Well, from a tradition standpoint, I’m not a huge fan, but it makes a lot of sense. mean, you’re probably, we’re probably leaving a lot of revenue on the table by not having alcohol sales. I think pretty much every, every other school in the big school in the country is doing it. much everywhere else. And not that that’s a reason to do anything, but you know, it’s, yeah, you’re just, it’s like the, it’s like the hospitality tax. You’re just leaving it on the table by, not, by not doing it.

So, know that, and again, I’m excited, you I think they, you know, the university and the city partnered together on that Clemson Music Fest last year that’s coming back. And I think it’s gonna be only a matter of time before we see like a stadium show and shows a little John again, because you know, you’re gonna, there’s a lot of stuff going on there with the, you know, the revenue share, the house settlement that’s coming and all those kinds of things. They’ve got a lot of stuff in front of them in the athletic department at the university that they’re.

There’s going to be a kind of wall to get over. Right. With this initial round and then hopefully at some point they fix that kind of structural issue with how schools are involved in NIL. It’s just like, here’s your NIL deal that it’s like, What is that? That’s not really, you know. Yeah. I mean, it’s, I don’t think it’s sustainable. Like from a, from a business standpoint, like unless you’re a oil tycoon that, you know, and you

You know, you can write a $5 million check and not think twice about it. mean, it’s, just, you gotta have an ROI. So, I mean, I think if, if they could figure out how to structure it to where you do get an ROI, if you, if you kick money in to, to help support these collectors or whatnot, think then it could be really, really big. Then the sky’s the limit, right? Yeah. I’m, know, now I’m, I am worried a little bit about private equity, getting involved in that kind of stuff, because, you know, when, when it comes, it’s going to be all about making money.

And I still do truly believe in the mission of like having an athletic program and having a well-rounded athletic program at a university is an important thing from the experience, you know, that all students and alumni and everyone get from being here. you know, and I like, you know, that’s one of the things I love about, you know, the way that a lot of our coaches are in Dabo in particular is like, we’re, we’re not, you know, we’re preparing you for life and preparing you for 20 years from now and setting you up for long-term success. I’m happy they’re getting paid as well. But again, I get really nervous when you start thinking about private equity because, mean, give me an example of when private equities come in somewhere and like, it’s like, hey, we’re all about the mission instead of the profit. so, I think there’s some problems that are going to occur there. And what I really, really worry about is at a certain point,

Football, for example, is going to get so expensive that you’re going to have schools that are just going to say, we just can’t do it anymore. Right. And, I think, you know, my prediction is that we’re going to end up if things keep going on the path that they’re on right now, we’re going to end up with about 36 to 48 total schools that are that are stick with football. I mean, think about it. you can do basketball is a whole lot more they’re going to say we’re going to be good at basketball and we’re going to we’re going to really work on that.

And I think you’re going to eventually see, you know, but don’t a lot of those, programs rely on football for revenue. You know, if you, if you go look at the finances, you know, lots of schools are losing money on their athletic department. We’re obviously in need of additional revenue when, you know, they just did the student fee and I know everyone else has one.

Um, as well, but I mean, we’re having to raise revenue from, you know, student fees and that kind of thing, which means, you know, that we’re trying to, know, we’re pulling every lever we can to stay in the black. Um, you know, moving forward, but there’s lots of schools that operate at a, you know, in the red and at a deficit. So, um, you know, I’m also worried that, you know, eventually it’s going to be like, Hey, you know what? You know, golf’s now a club sport, you know, X, Y, and Z track and field, you know,

We might have a club now that your varsity athletic programs are going to shrink because all the revenue is going to be needing to go to the three or four big sports that you’re in. And again, on this path, it’s going to be really, really, really difficult for schools and universities to keep operating that way and providing that broad-based athletic opportunity for students limits on the amount of sponsors that they can. I don’t think so. Yeah. So it’s going to, you know, again, it’s got, there’s, there’s, there’s a, it’s a, it’s a crazy time. There’s a lot to think about. you know, how, how will the, how will the federal government, you know, look at, you know, continue looking at enforcing title nine with gender equity, you know, if you, if you do start cutting, you know, we had that happen here, you know, when

They started to cut men’s track and there were other issues in the background, you know, as well where, you know, tried to cut men’s tracks so we could save some money and ended up, you know, with whatever the settlement was in the lawsuit, adding to women’s sports and keeping, you know, men’s track, at the end of the day. But, you know, at a certain point, if you’ve got to, you know, make those decisions from a economic standpoint, you, you bring the number of male and female athletes down, you know, proportionally.

you know, is there a point where, you know, they’re like, well, you know, football is just a different beast. You know, you really just can’t balance that out. You know what, what I’m, what I’m, you know, say afraid, but not really afraid of is that you end up with, you know, lot of schools are going to have football, men’s and women’s basketball. You might have baseball softball and you know, maybe like women’s rowing or something like that to balance out football if you do. you again, everything else becomes a.

There’s good and bad. There’s good and bad to that. you know, again, it’s the path we’re on right now is pretty, I think that’s a realistic possibility for a lot of schools. Thankfully, you know, Clemson’s doing well, pretty well, but you know, you think about there’s 120 schools out there in division one and they ain’t all Clemson’s. They’re not all Alabama’s. So you’re going to, you know, you’re going to see that nation nationwide. You know, I think we’ll be.

will be fine here and you know, for making those decisions, it’ll be down the road, but right. it’ll be interesting to watch. Well, guess what? I did not think that we would go through an hour this quick. I think we need to do this again. Yeah. Cause there’s a, there’s a lot of things that I was thinking about while you were talking that we could, that we could discuss. you, you open to do this again. Yeah. I like to keep this. I know you’re busy. and try to keep this to an hour. So, I think we’ll just try to reconvene another day. Yeah, that’d be great. Yeah. No, this has been great, Bob. like I said, I’m, I, you know, I’m, I’m usually seeing you in a social setting and I don’t, I don’t get the, don’t get to hear you talk shop so very often. So, I’m here. You you cracking jokes. Yeah. Just being, dumb. Yeah. So I, I’m, I’m actually gained a whole new respect for you.

Don’t do that. What a pleasant surprise. boring. So no, I really appreciate you coming on and we’ll definitely do it again. I do have a tremendous amount of respect for Bob. He’s been a good friend for a long time and he’s a really good guy in spite of what some people may say, but he’s an awesome guy and I’m proud to be his friend. So, but thanks again for coming on and this has been another edition of Experience Matters with Eric Newton.